


Brief Introductions of an Unintentional Nature

by WitchFlame (RachelMcN)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Road Safety, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23963716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RachelMcN/pseuds/WitchFlame
Summary: Warlock Dowling does not mean to attract strange circumstances and bizarre situations, they just sort of happen.So when his flatmate calls him in a panic to inform him her car had an unfortunate, high-speed meeting with an angel he doesn't really know what she expects of him.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 132





	Brief Introductions of an Unintentional Nature

The numbers are refusing to work themselves into any semblance of order, no matter how furiously Warlock glares at them. His phone sparks into life and he swipes it open, slamming it against his ear without dropping his glare. “What?” 

“Help,” Sophie squeaks, voice sounding strangely strangled down the call, “I fucked up, help.” 

Warlock hisses at the numbers for good measure before lowering his laptop lid. He wasn’t getting any work done anyway. “On a scale of one to ten,” he prompts, “With one being you lost your keys and ten being you hit somebody with your car.” 

“ _Twenty,”_ Sophie screeches down the phone. 

“Huh,” Warlock slumps back in his chair, “Don’t think I’ve ever had a twenty before.” 

“Yeah, well, I’ve never hit an _angel before,”_ Sophie sobs hysterically. 

Warlock blinks. “Hit, as in...” 

“Ran over! Like a bird, or a rabbit or a deer! With _my car_ , Warlock!” 

Warlock thinks about that, chewing on his finger. “I think deer’s are a bit too big to run over properly.” 

“Help me, you arse!” 

“I mean, really this should have only counted as a ten.” 

“I will change the locks on the flat!” 

“You’re the one going to jail,” Warlock argues. 

“I’m going to _Hell_ ,” Sophie screams, “I hit an angel!” 

“Alright, jeez, where are you?” 

“I don’t know!” Sophie cries unhelpfully, “I was driving back from visiting my mum and thought I’d take the back roads and I turned a corner and it was just _there_ and I don’t remember the impact but its wings are all mangled and oh God above I’m going to _Hell.”_

“Look, just put it in the boot and get back here.” 

There is a moment of silence. “You want me to put the _angel_ ,” Sophie snarls, “that I just _ran over,_ into my _boot?_ Like it’s _roadkill?”_

“Well, I don’t know,” Warlock protests, “Why, _is_ it roadkill?” 

“ ** _No_** ,” Sophie howls. 

“Well then, good,” Warlock decrees, “You didn’t kill it, look at that. Focus on the positives.” 

“I’m going to _strangle_ you.” 

“You might be more effective than with your car,” Warlock allows, “hit an angel and didn’t even have the decency to put the poor thing out of it’s misery.” Sophie sounds like she's having a fit on the other end of the call. “Put it in your backseat, then. You can tell the police you were at a costume party and decided to have a hit-and-kidnap.” He is going to be in so much trouble when she gets back. 

“You know what?” Sophie spits, “When it wakes up – and it _will_ wake up because I refuse to have killed an angel with my _car_ – I’m telling it _you_ were behind the wheel.” 

“A violent criminal _and_ a liar,” Warlock tuts, “my, we’re just wracking up the sins today, aren’t we?” 

“ _Screw. **You.** ”_

She wasn’t wrong. Warlock stares at the angel he’d helped her manhandle into the flat for lack of any better options. “Wow,” he states lowly, once the poor thing is stretched out along their couch, one limp wing trailing listlessly over the edge, “he’s a mess.” Sophie hits him. 

The angels other wing lies bunched against its back, feathers scrunched and torn as though they’d been ripped out mercilessly. Perhaps by the screeching tires of a red automobile. Its head hung forwards over the couch arm. 

“ _Sooo_ ,” Warlock draws out, “what now?” He looks over at Sophie who stares back at him blankly. “No, seriously,” Warlock insists, “we have a possibly dead or dying man with wings on our couch. I don’t care if he is an angel, he is man shaped and this is murder and/or kidnap adjacent.” 

“Well what was I supposed to do?” Sophie snaps, “You were the one who told me to bring him here.” 

“Clearly I’m an idiot,” Warlock argues back, “You’d already managed the hitting, what, the _running_ part was too difficult for you?” He nudges the fallen wing with the toes of his shoe. 

“Stop that,” Sophie whispers, “what if he wakes up?” 

“That’s what we want, surely?” 

“I don’t want to go to Hell,” Sophie whines, “I’m supposed to have a date next Saturday.” 

The angel lies there, failing to contribute to the discussion. 

“Hell does sound like a shithole,” Warlock concedes, “but surely any good, holy angel would understand that this was all just a terrible mistake and let you off with a warning?” 

“You’ve never been to church, have you?” Sophie states dryly, “Divine warriors of justice? Smiting the evil and unholy and people who hit other, winged people with their cars?” 

“Never bothered with church,” Warlock admits, “my nanny used to sing lullabies about death and destruction for the unworthy and the approaching end of days, though.” 

Sophie considers this. “Close enough. Point is, we lowly corrupted humans with our loud, evil vehicles that mow down innocent angels just crawling around on the road, are screwed.” 

“Why was he crawling around on the road?” Warlock frowns. 

“Maybe angels don’t understand good road sense,” Sophie shrugs, “maybe he lost his glasses, how should I know?” 

“Do angels need glasses?” 

“Do I need a flatmate?” 

“Now that you’ve implicated me in a crime, yes,” Warlock decides, “you do. Unless I need to become a snitch. Don’t kick me out and make me into a snitch, Sophie.” 

“I need wine.” 

“Hey, give the angel some too, maybe it’ll wake him up.” 

“I am not inebriating an angel of the Lord,” Sophie declares, twisting the lid off her fridge-chilled white wine, “or drowning him with alcohol because he can’t swallow. I’m in enough trouble already.” 

Warlock stares as the wingtip spread across the floor twitches. 

The lights had blinded him, the screech of tyres and brakes as Aziraphale had summoned what scraps of power still resided in him to teleport the vehicle beyond him. When consciousness scratches at him he can no longer feel the harsh grit of the road beneath his hands, or the wicked chill of the breeze. Noises filter over him, sharp and distinct. Voices. 

No. _No_. Not again. 

He tries to summon the power to move and only manages the tiniest twitch of his wing. They’d caught up to him. He’d been so _close_. He’d gotten all the way to Earth, for goodness sake. Crowley _must_ have been able to sense him, once he crash-landed. Must have raced for him. Oh, he hopes his poor demon is safe from them still. Please don’t let him have drawn Crowley to them; he couldn’t bare it if he was responsible for the demons demise. 

Something pushes lightly at his spread wing as pain lances through the abused limb. He takes it, unable to stop them. The runic bindings bite into him, greedily sapping whatever strength he struggles to conjure. It had taken _months_ to hoard enough scraps of power for his escape attempt. They’ll likely increase the burden now, ensure he doesn’t have even that hope. 

They’re going to claim the rest of his feathers as well, he knows that. They hadn’t cared overly much which ones they tore out, besides his primaries. They hadn’t wanted him to fly. He hadn’t really, more of a controlled fall – there was no way in Heaven that could ever have been considered gliding. Even then, he hadn’t held much control. He didn’t even know which _continent_ he had landed in. Not that it mattered, once they caught up to him. 

A demon in an angelic disguise; that’s what they had called him. Crowley would never have been so cruel as they. Petty and easily riled but never _cruel._ Their confidence in their righteousness makes monsters of them. Whoever holds the role of his current captor is ignoring him at present, which is the most mercy Aziraphale can hope for. They’ll never give him enough leeway to attempt escape again. Not when they need him to serve as an _example._

There’s a loud crash and Aziraphale braces himself for it all to begin again. 

Crowley has abandoned his Bentley to the mercy of a private airstrip, hijacked a private plane that he had absolutely no concept of how to fly but berated into submission nevertheless, torn across the ridiculously massive state on a variety of borrowed transport trying to narrow into the flimsy beacon of his angel and a _door_ is not going to be the thing that stops him. The terrified barrier finds itself smashing open hard enough to bury its handle into the wall as the occult entity of furious retribution streaks into the residence, ready to do battle with flame and fang. 

A wine bottle cracks open on the floor as the two human residents scream. 

Warlock trips back into Sophie, shoving her towards the bathroom as the demon shimmers in his view. It is at equal moments a man wreathed in hellish fire with massive pitch-dark wings that threaten to suck Warlock in, and a massive rearing snake that barely fits in their entrance hall, with eyes of molten flame and fangs longer than his arm and he doesn’t fancy facing either of them. 

He slams the door shut behind them and braces himself against it. “I think that’s for you,” he squeaks. Sophie looks like she’s about to throw up as she staggers towards the toilet bowl just in case. “I’m an innocent observer in all this, I never even knew you had a car. What is a car anyway, never heard of one.” There’s a disgusting splashing sound as Sophie’s stomach surrenders. “Oh god, we’re going to Hell,” he whimpers, “I’m sorry, Brother Francis, I tried. Heaven and me just never got along well, you know.” 

The door tears away as the lock snaps open and Warlock falls backwards between the feet of the flaming serpent man. “I’m sorry!” he screams, pointing wildly into the bathroom, “I don’t even drive, it’s all her fault!” There’s an answering surge of gurgling from Sophie as she vomits into the toilet bowl. “I’m already promised to Hell anyway, no need to drag me there early,” he babbles. 

The snake hisses down at him and Warlock bites his tongue. “ _I’m taking the angel_ ,” it snarls, “ _and if Heaven comes asking you tell them to_ _shove their halos up their arse.”_

Warlock doesn’t believe that is the safest thing he could say to a bunch of angels, especially after his flatmate already ran one over before letting a demon abscond with it. He nods mutely anyway. 

The demon growls and steps away from him and Warlock lies very carefully still as he hears it gathering up the angel and half stalking, half slithering for the door. He feels vaguely proud when he realises it’s left and he has neither died of massive blood loss or a heart attack. Sophie retches somewhere past his feet. 

**Author's Note:**

> Give Crowley some time, it took him three years to respond to Aziraphale's argument once, I'm sure he'll realise who he was threatening several months later over a nice glass of expensive red.


End file.
